Sermon 3/14/05
Mob Mentality - Matthew 21:1-11, Matthew 26:14-27:66
(view lectionary notes for this text)
Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the Highest! . . . Crucify Him! Crucify Him! . . .
This Lent, I’ve had a particularly hard time figuring out what time it is, and where I am. I don’t mean that I’ve lost the ability to read a clock, or that I don’t know that I’m standing here at St. Paul’s. What I mean is that a lot of the time, it hasn’t felt very much like we were in the midst of Lent to me, steadily moving toward this time, this place, this hour – the beginning of Holy Week – Palm/Passion Sunday. Maybe it is because Easter will come so early this year. It’s been hard to think about Easter lilies and hyacinths and pink dresses and spring chickens when we’ve had cold temperatures and piles of snow. Part of it is certainly because as a pastor my head is always planning weeks ahead of where we actually are in our church calendar. I was thinking about Lent at Christmas time, and now, during Lent, I’m thinking about May and June. But these excuses for my lack of connecting with our time and place are just that, I’m afraid: excuses. The truth is, I think, experiencing Lent fully and completely is an emotional process, if you open yourself to it. If we say we are journeying with Jesus through Lent to Easter, then we are saying that we will also endure this Holy Week with him – not only the adoring fans on Palm Sunday – but the rest of the week too – the days of pain and abandonment. The day of betrayal and denial. The day of death. It is difficult to willingly live through this week with Jesus. But here we are, ready or not. Holy Week is here again. Will we be part of it? Will we let it be part of us?
In our Bible Study last week, we talked about the swift change that occurs, shown in our two gospel lessons for today – the palms and the passion. First you have Jesus entering Jerusalem and the people throwing a spontaneous parade for him. They throw down their cloaks for him to travel over, and they wave palms, declaring that he is the Son of David, the one. But just a few days later in the week, the crowds are yelling to Pilate that this man must be put to death, even preferring to have a convicted criminal released rather than let Jesus go. Maybe, we could argue, the crowds who greet Jesus in jubilation are not the same people who later shout for his death. But we’ve still got hard questions to answer.
I’ve always thought that Jesus got himself crucified because he refused to be the kind of Messiah the people expected him to be. They wanted a revolutionary, didn’t they? Someone who would come in and free the Jews from Roman occupation. Someone who could be a grand king in the line of David, their favorite king of history. I thought that they just didn’t get what kind of Messiah Jesus was saying he was. I thought it was a case of mistaken identity. Jesus is not who they, or who we, thought he was. But if this were the case – if they wanted Jesus to be a certain kind of Messiah – if they were trying to force his hand – wouldn’t they realize sooner than his crucifixion that Jesus was not responding in the way they had hoped? If Jesus wasn’t the Messiah they were looking for, couldn’t they just ignore him? Couldn’t they just let him fade out of focus? Why did they act with such violence? Why was there no voice – no voice – standing up as an advocate for Jesus – no one who tried to save him from this death?
The more I think about it, the more I mull over the events of Jesus’ life in my mind, the more convinced I become that the reason we go so quickly from the crowds welcoming Jesus to the crowds yelling for his death is because they knew, and we know, exactly who Jesus is. For once, it seems everyone in the story is united in their actions towards Jesus. All of them, all of them, are united in their abandonment and rejection of Jesus. It is not just the Jews who act against him, but also the Romans. Not just the religious leaders, but also the common ‘regular’ people. Not just Judas, who we can readily write off as corrupted and evil, but also Peter, the faithful disciple, and the others, who never even get mentioned during all of Jesus’ trial, beatings, and crucifixion. Not one who Jesus healed, not one who Jesus forgave, not one who Jesus broke bread with speaks for him, acts on his behalf.
I often wish I could have lived in Jesus’ day – sat on the mountain to hear him preach, traveled with him as he visited places where others would not go, helped him share God’s love. I like to think that surely, surely I would not be part of the crowds yelling for his death. But what reason do we have to think otherwise? Honestly, I think we’d like to get rid of Jesus, even still, even today. Not because he’s not who we want him to be. But because we’re afraid we know exactly who he is.
This Jesus we crucify is one who just won’t let us be. And that is the most logical reason for us, with those we read about, to want to put Jesus to death. After all, Jesus is only a threat, a real threat, if he is who he claims to be – the Messiah, the one anointed to bring good news, preach repentance, and announce that God’s kingdom is already here on earth, right now. If Jesus is wrong, or lying, or crazy – he’s not a threat. It is because we believe him that he frightens us, and we seek to get his voice out of our heads and hearts any way we can.
If Jesus is the Messiah, then we really are supposed to love our enemies, count as our neighbors those who we think little of. If Jesus is the Messiah, then we really are called to give up the material things that we call treasures, and trade them for treasures of a different kind. If Jesus is the Messiah, then we really are supposed to go where God calls us, follow where God leads, no matter how inconvenient it is, how difficult it is, how painful it is. If Jesus really is the Messiah, then we’ve got to make changes to our lives, right now.
So wouldn’t it be easier, much easier, to get rid of Jesus? Wouldn’t be easier just to live as we’re living, as basically good people, without worrying about all those changes that will just make people think we’re behaving strangely anyway? Wouldn’t be easier to turn Jesus in to the authorities, and let them take care of it? Wouldn’t it be easier to pretend that we never knew Jesus? Wouldn’t it be easier to fade out of the story? Wouldn’t be easier to blend in with the crowd?
“Pilate said to them, ‘Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah?’ All of them said, ‘Let him be crucified!’”
Let us pray: …